UPDATE: Ridgedale House Had No Prior Violations

The borough has not cited the owner for prior violations in the case of a borough residence suspected of being an illicit “rooming house.”

No record of citations was found in an open records request by Patch.

In a brief phone interview Wednesday evening with Patch, Ralph Pirro disputed those allegations prior to a meeting with municipal officials Thursday regarding  64 Ridgedale Ave.

The outcome of the meeting was not immediately known. Phone calls to borough attorney Joseph Mezzacca and Pirro were not immediately returned.

Questionable conditions were found at the house early on the morning of Feb. 3 by firefighters who were called to likely caused by a discarded cigarette.

At the same time, reacting to a comment on Patch by a resident, Board of Health President John Hoover said he is checking into whether his office received complaints about the house in the past.

Missing smoke and carbon monoxide detectors had been temporarily removed by painters, Pirro explained.

“The conducted an inspection this week," he said. "The brackets are there. We are working to have the detectors reinstalled.”

Pirro said the mansard-style structure was a two-family house, not single-family, and that only seven people reside there, not 12 as reported. Although he said visitors could have been there at the time of the fire. Pirro said that one of the tenants is a graduate student at . No children live in the house.

While Pirro claimed that all the bedrooms have separate access via central hallways and conform to building codes, he confirmed that there was only one fire exit—through the front doors—with no alternate access or fire escape. It was not immediately known whether this conformed to code.

“The house definitely needs fixing up, the porch roof needs to be replaced, but it is a historic building,” Pirro said.